Tag: balance

SUCCESS isn’t created by business itself; a balance in life with family and hobbies is key; happiness is an important factor closely aligned with SUCCESS. I touched on that in the previous principle. Happiness is closely related to success, and my humble opinion is that without a partner and maybe children, or a healthy family that balances work, success in work alone is not worth it. But that might just be my perception. It is a bit of a bold statement of course. And how you define family is down to you, and whether you want to or would like to have kids. I wasn’t sure for a long time but couldn’t wish for anything else but my two boys, my wife and us sharing experience and life together. You can read more on this blog in my weekly Sunday Column. However, if you aren’t lucky enough to have family, you need a hobby. This is something I realised very late in life, because my focus was always on work and family. There wasn’t much room for other interests, particularly as my wife never allowed me to get a motor cycle 😉 Yet the key is to find something you

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Hello friends. I noticed that, if I am awake early on Mondays, that this is good writing time. So I am on another flight. Just about 16 hours after I disembarked my last. Yet the last one was for fun. My wife took me to Edinburgh for the weekend. It was amazing. Not only did you not have to worry about the kids but could do all the grown up things kids are not interested in. Culture, sight seeing, castles and whisky tastings. Plus, my wife took me to a restaurant, allegedly the best one in Scotland, the Witchery, where I ate the best steak I ever had in my life (and I had a lot), and I discovered the most interesting and tasting Italian blue cheese I ever had too. What a great weekend. Thank you again. Later in the week I got a belated birthday present. Two actually. One was the picture of a Buddha my youngest drew. I love it. I even got two copies, one for each office. How sweet is that? The other a book of pictures and quotes collected by my wife from my closest friends. It was very emotional to read the impact

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lk rohan colin rohan volker geenee nanee goodis ome oallp croopesh volker ule volerstela and stooit kasdon and rcaila rosee lilee —- I guess that is Colin’s first blog post. Can you spot your name, Judith, Michela, Krupesh, Oma, Opa, Karsten, Stuart, Stella, Rosie, Jenny, Lilly…..and Nanny of course. Not only did he win a prize in football this week, his brother turned 4 (officially), our neighbours got locked out, I had a doctor’s appointment I didn’t like and also I got a new filling, had to go to the dentist. And the dog went crazy, work was challenging, but overall as I am sitting down to start writing this blog on Friday night, I am content and happy. Why? I keep asking myself what makes me happy and content? I guess it is about accepting the challenge that you cannot change things. Things like life plays with you. Whether that is the wrong label from Amazon or the flower delivery on Valentine’s Day. The minor things or the major things. It is the challenges in the job and the progress I make on a daily basis. Really enjoyable work. A great company, exciting space and of course it comes

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The first post of 2015. Funny that. Happy New Year to all my readers! I hope you had a great start! I will post some motivational and new year planning thoughts on Linkedin tomorrow, so watch out for another post. And, this year will see a lot more productivity and personal development thoughts over at tidWOWs. We started off well, sound asleep by midnight, and a long walk with friends and kids in our woods around Hassocks. Afterwards we had coffees, good chats and lots of homemade chili. What a day to start the new year! So what’s in stock for 2015? What are your plans? We got our car repaired as it failed its MOT. That wasn’t the best start. Then, I decided, after losing all the fat around my waist, that I need to get rid of is my belly. Nothing better than starting the year with a “dry January“, e.g. giving up my beloved wine and any alcohol for that matter. Time to beat the belly. A better routine, some more physio to improve my running and a lot more focus on weight exercise to shed off the extra belly fat. Wish me luck! Matt Cutts, ever

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Three hundred Sunday Columns! Amazing. Almost 4 years. And I get more and more committed readers. Thanks for the support and kudus over the years. I keep on going, maybe stop with column 2,000 – around the age of 70. But who knows if blogs still exists by then, or the Internet. A life’s work by then. Tomorrow I am off for my last trip of the year. In the first half of the year I spent 22 nights away and had about a return flight within Europe every other week. Yet the 2nd half of the year seemed a lot busier. That’s because I spent two full weeks away, did a longer flight to Turkey, but overall actually had less flights. But the run up to Christmas only seems busier as it starts around September but then it is full on from there. More work in less time. Never mind. I believe travel also helps to get away and clear one’s mind a bit. Whilst the separation from the family isn’t nice, the coming home is fantastic. The balance is key as so often. My week has been very productive and I created lots of new content over at

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This week started really on Sunday night with us having had friends over for dinner. I feel like I am really settling in and enjoy life in our community. Other parents, kids, activities, sharing. Latter seems key to build good relationships. We have long arrived in Hassocks and go with the flow. Probably one of the best things I have done in life so far. Settling down. On that note it has been a year this week that we sold our old house and put an offer in on the current place. Time flies. On Tuesday I started running again. I find myself very unbalanced on Mondays. This is due to back-to-back meetings and follow ups you never really get on top of, followed by discussions, frustration, joy and curiosity. In other words: Mondays seem to be a roller coaster ride and you never know what happens. Tuesday results in lots of follow ups. I tend to either fast on Mondays or if I have a meeting I aim to eat reduced calories: salad, lean ham, no bread. Latter was the case this week. Anyway… Whilst running on Tuesday I watched the BBC’s/Dave Attenborough’s Africa report. When I was a

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This week started alright I thought. Slightly hung over from Saturday I didn’t feel well on Sunday. But it was Sunday to Monday night that I found out that it wasn’t the booze but some evil virus that made me feel sh@t. A stomach bug. Two days off sick. Or, as it happens these days, home office from your bedroom in between sleeps and toilet visits. My boss had the cheek to say “you look good being sick”. I didn’t feel it 🙁 On Wednesday I went back to work. Not only did I feel better but I also didn’t have a choice. We got a new water tank and thermostatic valves fitted. No water, no toilet flushing 😉 But as I said I was much better anyway. By time of writing my oldest seem to recover and we wait for the wife to be sick. The youngest had some symptoms already, maybe that was it already? Maybe it wasn’t. A bit of a gamble. Unfortunately, I had to cancel my trip to Madrid. I haven’t seen my staff there for a while and had some good meetings lined up. Also I wanted to meet our new staff. Never mind,

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Happy New Year again. My first proper Sunday Column of 2012. And what should I tell you. The year started a lot busier than anticipated. The break I had seems far away but was very revealing. I think that this year is going to bring a lot of change. One change is around the corner but I cannot speak about it yet. However, the other change I can speak about quite openly: we are planning to move. We are quite focused with our search and surprisingly spend all Saturday looking at places (towns that is). And, even more surprisingly, probably already made a decision on the town. Maybe we should look around more but maybe we should just go for this place. First thoughts but we believe it might be the right decision. We are going to sleep about it a few more nights, do some more research and then going to look for some actual properties. Scary thought to decide on a place for the next 18 years or longer 🙂 Anyway. The year started with every take away on the planet and probably close to the amount of booze as we had before and during Christmas. Not sure

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I think the last time I wrote about work life balance was regarding the entrepreneur and intrepreneur. A thought I had was when I have been working from home, which happens occasionally, whether I have a better or worse work-life-balance. And, the answer is difficult. I remember that studying for my MBA we discussed that if you work from home, you should get your own room/desk and area in the house. This way you could “go home” after work and relax, e.g. getting your life. However, for me as an occasional “working from home” person, it is not that easy. A small house with only one proper desk, it is like you are in your living room all day. Often, when I discuss that with clients, I get the answer of “I would get too distracted at home” – I agree, some people can. For me it is usually the other way around: I get up my usual time and sit on the laptop about one hour earlier than I usually do. Then, from a lunch point of view, I eat whatever is around and never really feel hungry, ergo do not have a proper break until the late afternoon.